


Sugar, Spice and All Things Nice

by ineternity



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dubious Baking Consent, Dubious Food Consent, F/M, Forced Relationship, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:41:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29828553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineternity/pseuds/ineternity
Summary: Part Two of Break, Rewind, Repeat.Every morning, the Master likes to bake. Without the repetition, what is there?
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & The Master (Dhawan), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 20





	Sugar, Spice and All Things Nice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Raindropsonwhiskers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raindropsonwhiskers/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Break, Rewind, Repeat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27237757) by [Raindropsonwhiskers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raindropsonwhiskers/pseuds/Raindropsonwhiskers). 



> Written under writer's block. Also a warning: this is unedited bullshit. I'm not going to lie, this fic stole all my braincells.

For the first time in a very long time, the Doctor is happy. A few years ago that was rare. There was always the chase, her versus some Universe ending threat. Now she can explore in her own time and share her life with someone who will always smile at her, no matter what she breaks.

The Master is happy too. He’s branched out into baking. It’s slower than what he’s used to but it’s a constant. There’s a routine to it, a mechanical accuracy in putting together a tray of biscuits- her favourites- and watching as they rise in the oven. The Doctor used to watch him bake every morning, his eyes lost in the repetition of it. After a while, she’d left him to it, opting to stay in bed just a while longer and breathe in biscuit flavoured air.

Today, they’re visiting Earth. There’s a special crop of vanilla that only grows in Madagascar; if he can pick a basketful, there will be enough of it to last months.

She’s timed their visit to coincide with an invasion, one she’s stopped before but is determined to see again. The Master has the perfect front seat to it all, he can watch from the fields below. They’ll talk about it later over dinner.

The Doctor is dressed in her best rainbows when they step out together. The white vanilla blossom is so bright that she has to squint to see the field. The plants won’t bloom as white as this for another fifty years.

“Back soon.” She squeezes his hand. “Get what you need. I’ll be in there.” The Doctor points upwards to the alien ship.

“I’ll be watching.” The Master presses a kiss to her cheek, she can feel the smile on his lips.

“I know.”

Time seems to speed up. The Doctor gets lost in how good it feels.

She offers them a compromise, some of Earth’s materials in return for their disappearance. Inevitably, the aliens don’t feel the same way. It’s a shame she has to turn off their power supply. Even more unfortunate how low their oxygen reserves are when it fails

The Doctor meets the Master back at the TARDIS, his eyes are fond as she takes his head between her hands.

“Lazy day tomorrow. I promise.” She smiles.

They work together to haul bags of vanilla pods onboard the TARDIS. There’s only one box to put them in but she makes a mess anyway and soon there’s a floor full of white blossom to clear away. The Master sweeps up, offering her a handful of it before they say goodnight.

She falls asleep with her fingers over his temples.

\---

They wake up on opposite sides of the same bed, artificial sunlight dividing the room in two.

She strokes at the edges of his mind, feeling that familiar buzz of attachment vibrate softly through her own skull. The Master’s mind is still, ideas about books and piano concertos floating idly to the surface. The Doctor digs a little deeper to rouse him.

There is a loud yawn from the other side of the bed as he rolls over. His eyes are droopy.

“You slept well,” She reaches over to stroke a strand of his hair. “Messy.”

He hums, nose scrunching.

“Come here. I missed you all night.”

The Doctor edges forward, tangling their limbs together. It makes her skin tingle, the way he caresses her arm, like she’s a tiny china doll.

“Stay here, just for a bit.” She whispers.

One side of the Master’s mouth drops. The Doctor frowns.

“What’s wrong?”

She presses herself closer to him, clinging to him in a tighter hug.

“I will. I just…”

“You don’t want to stay in bed with me?”

“I do.” The Master’s smile corrects itself but his eyes are wide open. She can tell something’s bothering him

“No, there’s something wrong. Tell me.” She nudges her mind softly against his.

“I-” He stutters.

The Doctor’s gaze softens. “You want to bake, don’t you.” The Master’s frame relaxes. She ruffles his hair. “Come back here as soon as you’re done though. I want custard creams and I want to cuddle you.”

He lets her stroke the soft skin on his neck for a while before he rolls out of bed. She hears him patter to the kitchen

“Don’t be too long!”

The Doctor lies back. The bedsheets are soft beneath her. It’s so nice to take a slower path. Before, she had never stopped moving. Now she has someone to care for.

Having the undivided attention of somebody else is… special. Not like her humans. More enduring, purer, happy… soft. Being with the Master like this is like basking in the heat of a fireplace. It had been tricky to start off with, they’d disagreed and he’d got burnt. But then the Doctor had promised to love him back. And now they’re happy.

She slumps back into a semi-conscious doze for a while, stirring a little while later as she slips from a dream. The Doctor sniffs the air. It smells of fresh linen. There’s something missing. Surely by now, the smell of custard creams should be all around her. She should be able to taste the sugar on the tip of her tongue.

Perhaps something has gone wrong. They had picked up Earth ingredients.

She hops out of bed and pulls on a fresh shirt, barely remembering her underwear before sauntering into the TARDIS kitchen.

“Master?”

The oven is on but there is nothing baking inside. Where there should be a mess of ingredients, there is nothing but empty space. Something isn’t right.

The Doctor quickens her pace. The dining room is deserted too, there is nothing but the burnt candle stubs of last night’s dinner littering the table.

“Master!” She shouts and forces the boundaries of her mind against his. He isn’t resisting, she can feel the same thoughts drift at a leisurely pace through the forefront of his mind, completely open to her. She digs in a little harder. “You’re okay. _You’re_ _okay_.”

The Doctor begins to close off the rooms of the TARDIS. If she can contain him within two or three rooms, she can bring him back. Her ship opens the doors in front of her and she follows the trail all the way to the ballroom.

The Master stands in the middle of the floor, back facing her. He’s looking up at the stage, head quirked to one side.

“It’s beautiful,” He says. His fingertips are curling upwards, stroking at the empty air like a plant’s leaves twinging as they wilt.

The Doctor scowls.

His mind is easy to shatter once she makes a crack. She forces his body to turn and locks his legs into a soldier’s march. The stomp of his boots echoes around the room. The floor is so clean that they squeak on impact.

“Give me a smile.” The Valeyard commands. His eyes crease into slits, until she’s sure he can’t see where he’s going. The Master has his mouth open, like he’s on the cusp of a laugh.

She doesn’t touch him. Instead she drags his body through the doorframe and into the kitchen where the heat of the oven fills the room. It’s where he should want to be, though he’s permitted to explore. “Would you like to make me breakfast?”

His head moves up and down. She doesn’t even have to pull it.

“It’s nice, this. When you’re good for me.”

The Master reaches for the butter dish. She makes his hands shake as he does it. The lid falls and smashes on the floor. He walks to fetch a new packet, unflinching as his boots tread on the broken glass.

The butter will need to melt first, then combine with the sugar. He’ll blend it together, pour the milk in and then slowly add vanilla.

The vanilla pods they had gathered from Madagascar are gone, replaced with a translucent brown syrup. The TARDIS must have developed the ingredients into extract overnight- though there’s hardly any left in the bottle she can see.

The Valeyard pulls up a chair.

“Remember when I tried to cook?” He nods, shoulder muscles flexing as he kneads the ingredients. “I burnt the flour. You helped me scrape it out.”

He had been so good. She can still remember the feeling of his soft hands guiding hers, gently squeezing when she got it right. The Master had learnt to be patient with her, to accept her for what she was. But he could still make mistakes.

The bottle of milk drops from the Master’s hand and collides with the floor. The lid shoots off and the liquid sprays everywhere. He’s being clumsy.

“You’re messy,” she tuts and points her foot towards the puddle on the floor. “Go on then.”

He doesn’t move.

“Koschei?” She frowns. His shoulders are shaking. The Valeyard leans forward. “Don’t do that.”

The shaking calms.

“Turn around.”

He doesn’t move at first but the resistance ebbs away quickly. The Master turns, heels dragging in the milk. His eyes are blown, gaping open when they should be smiling. He’s laughing. She isn’t telling him to.

“Tell me the joke,” the Valeyard commands.

“I love you,” the Master smiles.

“Tell me the joke,” She repeats.

He keeps laughing.

The Valeyard cuts a neat line into his mind. His synapses are firing but they’re wrong. His body feels like it’s tearing its way out of its frame. Whatever’s happening, the Master has caused it.

“You took something.”

“It was beautiful.” He chokes out.

She presses hard.

The Master falls backwards. The Valeyard can’t move fast enough to catch him. She crashes to the floor beside him, milk soaks into the legs of her trousers. His eyes are squeezed shut in silent agony, there’s almost no way of stopping the pain from seeping into her own head.

It’s almost too familiar. She’s seen him like this before, these same symptoms. Crashed out in an Academy dorm-room, eyes blown, breathing ragged. Theta too.

“You’ve been drinking.” She says, but he’s so much more than drunk.

There shouldn’t be any alcohol onboard. The Valeyard had made sure of that before agreeing to take care of him. A bottle is too easy to drain- and smash, too addictive, too poisonous and too easy. She has a duty of care.

“‘S’ nice,” He whispers, then grimaces as she scowls.

“This isn’t good. Good people don’t go behind my back. Good people stay where I can see them.”

“Didn’t,” The Master whimpers. There’s moisture collecting at the corner of his eyes, though she can see he’s trying to snarl instead. “Didn’t go.”

It hits her. “The vanilla.”

The extract. Natural alcohol in its purest form. Bottles and bottles of it. She looks up at the shelves, their entire stock has been drained dry.

”You never would,” she breathes. “You couldn’t.”

He’s shaking again, though she told him to stop. There is cold sweat beading on his brow, moving as tremors pass through him.

“Never thought it’d be like this.” The Master murmurs, the words slur together. “Maybe shot or burnt. Not biscuits.”

“This isn’t your choice.”

“It’s my life,” He tries to spit but the words barely form in his throat.

“No.”

The Master smiles. “Got you.”

“No!”

She squeezes the sides of his head, stabbing at any thought of death between her two hands. But it’s too late, his heartbeats are too far apart. There’s no way the Valeyard can control him like this.

There’s vanilla in the air. She heaves the scent of it into her lungs and screams out.

The Master’s breath stops. The Valeyard pushes her hand against his throat. There’s no heartbeat.

Contact.

There’s no response.

She tears through his mind, ripping apart his last barriers, and reaches into the very core of him. The Valeyard can see a golden ball of light in the centre, getting fainter and fainter as it shrinks. Hers.

Around the ball there are shapes like lightning strikes, dangling down like vines. She can feel them throbbing in time with her own heartbeats. The Valeyard curls around one of them and pulls hard.

A flash of golden light flickers at the end of the nerve. She steps back to watch it fade and then, with the weight of her mind, wrenches the shape from its socket. The body beneath her twitches.

She can save him.

The Valeyard finds another and twists. The light flashes, piercing through the darkness. Then she finds another, twisting and pulling the strings of him over and over.

The hearts beneath her spasm. She can feel hot breath on her cheek, coming in bursts

Again.

The Master screams.

The Valeyard opens her eyes. He is writhing, back arching up and crashing down- an electric chair jolt. She watches.

His eyes are frantic, beautiful, so full of tears that the shape of them blur. “No, no, _no_!” He struggles underneath her.“Please. Don’t do this, I can’t, _please_.”

She straightens up, releases her hold on his waist. The Master whimpers as the contact breaks, head craning desperately upward.

“It’s my fault. I made a mistake”

His breath catches. “What?”

She frowns. “I let you believe we were the same.”

The Valeyard stands, watching as he drags himself into a sitting position. The puddle of milk swirls with broken glass, red and dripping into the white. It soaks him.

“We can’t keep pretending you equal me, when you are _so much less_.”

The Master closes his eyes.

“No,” She says and reaches down, tilting his chin up with her fingers. “Look at me.”

His eyelashes flutter open.

“You need to know where you belong.”

He whimpers. Lips moving in prayer. 

“Kneel for your Master.”


End file.
